Monday, August 24, 2015

Staunton, August 24 – Moscow
historian Arkady Popov has been systematically examining and demolishing the
eight myths Vladimir Putin and his regime have put forward in justification of
the Russian Anschluss of Crime.In today’s
“Yezhednevny zhurnal,” he takes on the fourth one: that Moscow had “an extreme
need” to take Crimea away from Ukraine.

(For his earlier articles on the
mythology of Putin’s “Krymnash” notions, see

Popov writes that Moscow’s Krymnash
enthusiasts from Putin on down have offered such “a multitude of justifications
for the seizure of Crimea” that is difficult to avoid the suspicion that many
of them are simply being put out without much confidence that anyone will
believe them (ej.ru/?a=note&id=28431).

But
there are two claims, which continue to be offered as explanations for why
Moscow had to act and which have to be examined: that ethnic Russian residents
in Crimea were threatened with a genocide and that if Moscow did nothing, NATO
would put bases in Crimea. Neither of these notions stands up, Popov says.

During
the 23 years of Ukrainian independence, he points out, “none of the ethnic
Russian Crimeans had been subjected to genocide” or was likely to be. Yes,
there had been tensions, especially in the immediate post-Soviet period, but
none of them rise to the status of genocide.

Moreover,
the ethnic Russians there did not complain about genocide; and “after
1994-1996, the level of support for pro-Russian organizations [in Crimea] was
already not high.” In 1994, there were 55 pro-Russian deputies in the 100-member
Crimean Supreme Soviet; by 2010, there were only three.

Moreover,
Popov notes, according to polls, “already in 2006, 74 percent of the residents
of Crimea acknowledged Ukraine as their fatherland.” That figure fell to 40
percent after the orange revolution in 2008; but it fell not just among ethnic
Russian residents of Crimea but among others as well, an indication that this
was not a “Russian” issue.

Moreover,
Popov continues, by 2011, the share of Crimean residents who viewed Ukraine as
their fatherland had again “risen to 71 percent,” hardly an indication of the
presence or fear of genocide by ethnic Russians there.

And
such a pattern casts doubt on the veracity of Putin when he asserts that some “’closed
poll’” taken before the Anschluss showed that “75 percent of the population of
Crimea supported unification with Russia.”No one knows, Popov says, “what
kind of a poll this was, who conducted it, and how correctly.”

Moreover, Russians there could have few
complaints about Russian-language education: the use of Russian dominated the scene;
and those who could have and did sometimes have complaints about the languages
used in the schools were the Ukrainians and the Crimean Tatars who had been
marginalized even then, Popov says.

There
was one language issue that Russians might have been concerned about, the
historian continues. Ukrainian law requires subtitles in Ukrainian for any film
shown in Ukraine. But “does this mean that ‘the little green men’ arrived in
Crimea to save Russian movie goers from Ukrainian subtitles?”

Moscow
propagandists also like to claim that Russians and Russian institutions were
threatened after the Maidan by “Right Sector” activists. But their numbers in
Crimea were so small that they could not have threatened anyone, let along
Russian institutions like the Black Sea fleet. Nonetheless, this has been a
constant theme of the Krymnashists.

The
other danger that they invoke to justify Russia’s intervention and occupation
is the likelihood in their view that if Moscow didn’t move, there would soon be
a NATO base in Crimea.The American
reaction to Ukrainian events show how improbable that is now or at any time in
the future, Popov argues.

Such
suggestions, he points out, are an exact repetition of what Soviet
propagandists said to justify the crushing of the Prague Spring in 1968: “If we
don’t go into Prague today, tomorrow there will be German forces from NATO.”
That argument was absurd then; it is equally absurd in the case of Crimea.

And
it ignores something else, Popov says. “Thanks to the military intervention of
Russia in Ukraine, the North Atlantic alliance has gotten a second wind:
special NATO rapid reaction forces are being created, the military presence of
NATO in the Baltic region and in other countries of Eastern Europe is
expanding.”

In
addition, “the Scandinavian countries have accused Russia of being the chief
security threat in the region and have taken decisions to coordinate their defense
policies in respond to this threat,” Popov says, even including Sweden and
Finland which are not members of the alliance.

Was
this why Russia needed to occupy Crimea, to restore an alliance of “all its neighbors
against Russia?”Unfortunately, that is
what has happened.

The
“real motives” for Moscow’s actions, he says, lie elsewhere. They involve a
desire in the Kremlin to provoke nationalism at home and to set the stage for occupying
all or most of Ukraine.Indeed, he
concludes, “the various ‘Crimean’ myths are connected” directly with the
invasion of the Donbas and “the ‘continuation’ of the new political course of
the Kremlin.”